


The Changing Face of Fandom and its Challenge to the Outside World

by Sharpiefan



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Essays, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:06:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3765838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharpiefan/pseuds/Sharpiefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thoughts that came out of a discussion on fandom and RL colliding – or not.</p><p>You are very welcome to quote portions of this essay, but please credit me (either as 'Sharpie' or 'Sharpiefan' is fine), and if possible include a link back so that other people can read the full work. Thank you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Changing Face of Fandom and its Challenge to the Outside World

Thoughts that came out of a discussion on fandom and RL colliding – or not.

I have meta'd before, once, on why I find my specific fandom so interesting. This essay is more about fandom itself and how it is perceived (if at all) by others. It concentrates mainly on fandom as demonstrated in the growth and of fanfic, as that is the aspect of fannish culture and creation with which I am most familiar.

My original post, which developed into a wonderful discussion ([here](http://sharpiefan.dreamwidth.org/401499.html?view=2425947)), had its roots in my father coming downstairs and asking whether I was aware of fanfic – he had just listened to a program on Radio 4 about it.

This developed into a very long (and hopefully thought-provoking) essay! Please bear in mind that I don't pretend to speak for all fandom - it's much too large and disparate for anyone to do that. This is just my take on something that I consider important. I should very much hope that YMMV - whether you agree with any, all, or none, of my thoughts and ideas, I hope that something strikes a chord with you. This is, after all, an attempt to celebrate fandom as much as to explain (if I can even come near it!) why we as fans present such a conundrum to those people outside fandom who look upon us with bemusement and confusion.

We are very lucky to live in a world where communications are so easy – we have the Internet and can talk to people in America, Australia, Britain, Africa, Continental Europe, the Middle East and many, many other places not listed, with no real restriction. It is very easy to share copious amounts of information at the click of a button, and to look up information on topics and subjects we are unfamiliar with. We can post articles in so many places.

And because of this ease of communication, the world of fandom has changed significantly from when fandom began to take off, in the 60s and 70s, with hard-copy zines and conventions where fans could, if they were able to get there, meet up with other fans to share their love of their common fandom.

And with the birth and development of the Internet, this type of fandom has given way to a more immediate type with a far bigger pool of writers writing for a far greater number of readers than ever before. Fans are not limited to their own fandom, either – I read SGA fic and have never seen a single episode of SGA, let alone consider myself a part of the SGA fandom.

30 or 40 years ago – even 20 years ago – it was much harder to find fandom. Personally, I was a fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from the time the first episode aired, but I never had the first idea about how to get into fandom itself: There were no conventions near me that I could get to, I never had the money to join the main fanclub advertised in the novels I could afford and I had no other connection to people in the know. Fandom was not something that you could stumble over as an outsider.

These days, fandom – or certain expression thereof – are much more discoverable because of the Internet. But these days, if you Google Star Trek, or Harry Potter or any of a half a dozen other things, you'll get fanfic archives listed as a matter of course, almost. I tried a small experiment: I Googled 'Harry Potter' (not one of my usual searches, I wanted something that Google did not think was a typical search for me) and 'Harry Potter fan fiction' was the eighth suggested search that Google threw up as I typed. Depending on what sort of thing you watch on Youtube, you get fanvids suggested as their 'you may also like...' links.

And it's because of this new visibility that fandom works have that people are more likely to talk about it, that fandom is more likely to pop up in more mainstream media discussion, such as the recent BBC Radio 4 programme titled _'When Harry Potter met Frodo: The Strange World of Fan Fiction": Novelist Naomi Alderman investigates the extraordinary subculture of internet fan fiction._ People outside of fandom may not even need to have the terms fandom or fanfic explained to them, because of this new visibility.

The Radio 4 programme was looking specifically at fanfic, and didn't seem to take into account that fic is a single expression of a whole culture that dates back in some form or other to (approximately) 1969 when ST:TOS went off-air and people began writing letters to the production offices and other people in an attempt to bring it back, and writing fic to carry on the stories of the characters.

The dubious legality of fanfic

This isn't something that really seems to be mentioned in the few mainstream discussions of fanfic that I am aware about; those discussions seem to prefer to focus on what is, to those outside fandom, some strange or unusual activity. Mainstream discussions seem to concentrate much more on looking at slashfic without necessarily taking into consideration that slashfic is a subgenre of fanfic – if they are even aware that it is a subgenre. Certainly, it is a very visible, very easily-found subgenre.

We are all aware to some extent, I think, of the grey area that fanfic is in legally. Are we breaking copyright when we write in someone else's universe, about someone else's characters? I think that we are not: It would be a breach of copyright if we were to directly lift someone's words from a text and pretend they are our own words. But characters can't be copyrighted (even Disney can't do that; their characters are trademarked, which is similar but not the same).

Historically, companies and authors have issued Cease and Desist letters as a way of trying to get people to stop breaking their copyright. C&D letters are still sent out, and Youtube (among others) has a policy of taking vids down if there is even a hint breathed that the content is not quite legal. One of [](http://esteven.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**esteven**](http://esteven.dreamwidth.org/) 's replies reminded me that TPTB of certain fandoms prosecuted when the fanwork contained slash. ([See here for more information](http://fanlore.org/wiki/TPTB%27s_Involvement_and_Interference)). And of course, back in the 60s and 70s, it was illegal in the UK to be openly gay, and to encourage homosexuality, so Customs seized and destroyed anything that was considered to be gay porn - which included individual zines containing slashfic, sent to individual fans from addresses in the US that were known to be producers of 'gay porn' (AKA fanzine editors).

Ficcers responded by putting up disclaimers with their work. Whether this helped or not, I do not know – I think it does, but then I add disclaimers to my own fics, usually as part of an Author's Note. It seems that fewer authors are adding disclaimers to their work these days, and I do not know why this should be. I would think, with the threat of acts like SOPA/PIPA and ACTA that ficcers would be more likely to try to cover themselves. I also wonder if the reason it doesn't get prosecuted now simply because of how many different fandoms there are and how many people are writing it? Not to mention the small fact that all those people are all over the world, and each country has different laws &c. Although having said that, are people aware of the case of Richard O'Dwyer, who ran a website which linked to other sites that streamed vids, some of which were pirated? (More on this below)

Fanfic is in a grey area legally for more than one reason. There has never been a test case to determine how legal it is, if it is at all. I think part of the issue here is that fandom is worldwide. I am British, I write with characters invented by British authors, and I publish my work online, on DW and on the AO3, which are hosted on servers in America.

[](http://espresso-addict.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**espresso_addict**](http://espresso-addict.dreamwidth.org/) said to me that: _I believe it's the country of publication that matters, not the country in which the copyright is held._

If I were to be sued for breach of copyright, I am more likely to go to trial in Britain, despite the fact I publish in _America_ , because of the fandom I am involved in. It would make _far_ more sense for, say, British author Joe Bloggs to sue me here in the UK for damages because I used his character and settings in a fic I then posted on DW or the AO3... but what if it's, I don't know, Aussie or Canadian author John Doe wanting to sue for the same thing? That'd be a truly international mess – it is no wonder there hasn't been a test case for fanfic yet!

I think, if/when that test case _does_ happen, it'll be an American author/publisher/other copyright holder against an _American_ fan who posted her fic to LJ/DW/AO3/ff.net, which are sites on _American_ servers. And that won't necessarily work as a test case for anything where one of the sides of the triangle _isn't_ American. (And that applies to quite a lot of fandom!)

Copyright laws are much tighter now than they have been historically, which means we need to be more careful about what we do and how we go about it. Despite this, I don't know (personally) of any ficcers who have recently been sent C&D letters – and maybe that also has something to do with the sheer volume of fic available? After all, how can Author X's lawyer send a C&D letter to every fan who writes fanfic based on Author X's characters?

It is much easier to issue a C&D letter against a Youtube vid where the music and footage are clearly copyrighted to artists and studios based in America than against a writer of fanfic who may or may not be American and where the source, although obvious, is not quoted directly in any way apart from with the names of the characters. I also do not think that, for example, the terms 'transporter' (from Star Trek), 'X-wing' or 'lightsaber'(from Star Wars) or 'puddlejumper' (from SGA) are copyrighted, although their provenance is clearly not that of a fan-creation.

They refused the extradition recently of someone accused of copyright violation. Admittedly, I believe that case went up to the Home Office, but it was refused. The case involved a 24-year-old man who had a website that _linked_ to sites where pirated videos could be found, and the US federal government wanted to have him extradited to face charges of copyright violation. So, if that is a precedent, I am not sure how it would affect those who write fanfic – or the webhosts. [Wikipedia founder joins fight against Richard O'Dwyer extradition](http://www.itv.com/news/2012-06-25/wikipedia-founder-joins-fight-against-richard-odwyer-extradition/)

 

> The founder of internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia has thrown his support behind a campaign seeking to block the extradition of a British student to the US on copyright charges.
> 
> Jimmy Wales, 45, came out in support of Richard O'Dwyer, 24, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of charges relating to his website, TVShack.net, which linked to other sites that streamed pirated television programmes.
> 
> _Richard O'Dwyer is not a US citizen, he's lived in the UK all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the US._
> 
> "America is trying to prosecute a UK citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil.
> 
> "The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online."

I understand I'm at more risk as a vidder and to that end I am not hosting on YouTube (which has taken down several vids for copyright violation, or perceived copyright violations) and I'm using mostly traditional music. The songs aren't in copyright, although the actual performance of them is (weird, grey area) - and I am trying to stick to music performed by British artists... though when it comes to using any sort of film soundtrack, _that_ bit is no longer relevant.

Those people _in_ fandom don't want to raise the profile of fandom because we're very aware of the tenuous legality of it all - there's not been a test case anywhere to prove whether writing fanfic is a legal activity or not, and a test case in one country won't hold water in another.

For example, if it _did_ go to court in the States and was proven to be legal - or at least, not illegal which isn't the same thing - it would still be illegal or as near as dammit over here in the UK, because UK law is different, assumes a different set of circumstances and has different consequences. And unless this test case took place under US Federal law, it would not hold up across the whole US, but only in the state concerned. After all, not all states practise capital punishment. One state allows men to have multiple wives. And those are much bigger issues, over all, than how to deal with copyright violations – or even what constitutes such copyright violation.

The legality or otherwise of our work is (or ought to be!) a big part of fannish consciousness, whether or not we choose to stop because we consider it illegal, or carry on despite thinking it's illegal, or carry on because we _don't_ consider that it illegal. I put up disclaimers on my stuff because I am very aware of the fact that UK law is stricter than US law - there is no 'fair use' clause (AFAIK) in British copyright law. I wonder if it is those newer to fandom, or in newer fandoms, who have stopped adding disclaimers? Or whether they are American, or ficcing in American-based fandoms (like SPN, SG-1, SGA and the like)? There must be some common denominator there somewhere.

[](http://espresso-addict.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**espresso_addict**](http://espresso-addict.dreamwidth.org/) again: _I don't know how English & US fair use compare, but there is certainly a concept of fair use in English law. Whether or not it applies to fanfiction is debatable, but the usual justification is that fanfiction falls under the critique/review clause (see [here](http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others), which I believe is an official document). This does, I now notice, require the source to be acknowledged, so it might well be that disclaimers that state the source help to increase its legality in England. There again, online publication in US archives eg AO3 or on DW/LJ wouldn't fall under English law. _

I don't know how likely a British, Canadian or Aussie (for example!) fan is to be prosecuted by an American TV studio for producing, say, SGA slashfic, but I honestly cannot see it being very likely. I am more likely to be prosecuted by a British author for infringing their copyright even if my work is hosted on an American server or two.

The sheer number of different fan-created works is not likely to diminish even with a successful lawsuit or two in place. And for the curious non-fan, reading fics is a good place to find like-minded people to talk with and share things with... and maybe even write fanfic for.

The parting of ways of fanclubs and fandom

I asked Esteven, out of curiosity, how she originally got into fandom in the first place and she mentioned going into Forbidden Planet and handing over a stack of zines for the cashier to ring through the till. _I still like it, but at that time it was a nice slightly disreputable looking little shop. I guess that's when I loved it most. They had zines on their shelves and never even batted an eyelid when I handed over a mountain of zines_ This made me think. Perhaps it's due to the rise of the internet that fandom (as we know it, Jim) and fanclubs (official or otherwise) have diverged somewhat? It seems to me, and maybe I'm reading it wrong, that where a few years ago a fan would go a to fanclub and get that club's zines, with their limited amount of fic and all, now those fans getting online and heading to the AO3 and ff.net and getting tons of fic just by entering a few words into a search bar.

And if so, does this mean that the traditional fanclubs might be on their way out, killed because fandom itself has gone viral?

Interesting thought.

There are still fanclubs around, though I don't know if those clubs are still producing zines – if they ever did. (For example, I don't know that the Sharpe Appreciation Society, set up by a fan, ever produced a zine of any sort.) The internet has just made things so easy for us, I think that sometimes we've forgotten fandom is much older than the 'Net. Fanfic has been written and produced for centuries, although it's only with the introduction of modern copyright laws, and the application of the same, that fic based on a published story (in whatever medium – for the purposes of this line of thought, TV/film shows are considered publications) has been classed as fanfic. Shakespeare wasn't the only one to write about the King and Queen of the Fairies (look at Spencer's the Faerie Queen) and he certainly wasn't the one who named Puck. Nor was he the first to write about doomed lovers. _Hamlet_ is probably based on a legend recorded in the 13th century and a subsequently retold in the 16th century. In modern terminology, Hamlet is a fan-created work.

Fandom existed before the Internet – the birth of modern fandom as we know it, although not in its modern guise, was ST:TOS. Maybe our LJ and DW fan communities are the modern version of fanclubs, where we can come together to discuss our mutual obsessions, share fics and vids and generally chill? If Master and Commander had come out in pre-internet days, maybe [](http://perfect-duet.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**perfect_duet**](http://perfect-duet.dreamwidth.org/) would have come into existence along the lines of the Star Trek clubs, with meet-ups and zines?

The 'Discovery' of Fanfic  
So, it's the people from _outside_ fandom who are 'discovering' fanfic (as the most obvious expression of fandom) for the first time as though it's something new and want to try to understand it... without realising that to understand it, you have to observe certain etiquette and practices and that it has norms and rules of its own.

It's almost like, I don't know, finding a lost tribe somewhere in the jungle. That tribe's been there for years and has its own language and culture but you won't understand that language and culture without taking to time to live with that tribe and learn their way of life. The problem with such an analogy is, of course, that when it comes to a lost tribe, you're obviously in an environment that is alien to you, strange, hostile, possibly even downright uninviting. And when you find the lost tribe, they don't look like you. They may be taller, shorter, have darker or lighter skin. They certainly won't be wearing the same clothes or talking the same language (or anything like the same language). Their houses will look very different. They may treat members of their society very differently to how you and I treat members of our own societies. They are very _visibly_ different.

Despite our very visible fannish output, fandom as a whole is an _invisible_ group. We wear the same clothes as those around us. We speak the same language – though fandom does have terminology of its own (slash, fic, gen, hurt/comfort, pr0n). There are fans on Facebook, on Twitter. We have respectable jobs, or are students. We are adults who look no different to those around us.

So because we look the same, mainstream is surprised to encounter us. They don't realise, when they stumble across fanfic, that they have found just one expression of a much bigger thing. They are the Colonial explorers who stumble across the sacred story-telling circle of the Lost Tribe of the Congo without seeing any evidence of the village and villagers it serves. No wonder they treat fans the way they do and are surprised by the way we react in turn. And they don't realise that to learn about us, they have to be prepared to view our discussions, our squee, our long long drawn-out debates about details that, to non-fans, would be minor, irrelevant things – the AoS breeches v trousers debate that I was really annoyed that I missed comes to mind here. Was Captain Sawyer pushed or did he fall is another debate that comes up time and again on Horatians – and it never grows old.

These non-fannish people don't even realise that they've stumbled across another culture because we look, in so many ways, just like them. They are surprised to find that most of fandom is female, because we use pseudonyms – I, like many others my age, was told, time and again, not give my real name or my sex away online. Using a pseudonym is second nature to me. When I meet up with other fans IRL, I answer to my online fannish name, or a variant thereof, without thinking. Pre-Internet fandom did not have this particular problem, of course, so it is possible to find older fics written under RL names, or names that appear to be RL names.

We are an invisible people, an invisible race, taking part in activities that, for good or bad, are becoming increasingly visibile. So, because we're a lot more visible to the casual internet passerby, people are beginning to get curious. And want to understand the whole thing, without understanding that it is a culture - the lost jungle tribe is a lot more understandable as its own culture than something that's pretty much only come to the surface because of the internet, which is why it isn't a perfect example.

And again, it's the not understanding that fandom is a culture with its own etiquette, rules, language &c that led to the Fanlib thing, and the LOTRFF mess-up and similar situations - because those people came in from outside, saw (to them) something that's not making money when (in their non-fannish culture) it should.

The legality or otherwise is (or ought to be!) a big part of fannish consciousness. I put up disclaimers on my stuff because I am very aware of the fact that UK law is stricter than US law - there is no 'fair use' clause (AFAIK) in British copyright law.

It is the people who come in from outside, don't see that there is a culture clash, that fandom is not making money for reasons beside 'not knowing what an archive is worth' who are the greatest risk. They do not appreciate the tenuous legality of what we do, that we are left alone by TPTB because it is not-for-profit fun (and sometimes not even left alone then). The recent big issues – Fanlib, the Fanhistory wiki and the sale of the LOTRfanfic archive – all came down to people wanting to make money from fandom without understanding fandom itself. Going back to my jungle tribe analogy, these people like the pretty toys and trinkets and want to use those to make shiny dollars, and do not understand that the pretty trinkets are currency in the culture they do not realise they have found.

I think, these days, fandom is a lot more mainstream that it used to be, in a way - most people have a computer or tablet or smartphone or some other way of getting online and you don't have to dress up in weird clothes to be a fan. We're a lot less visible as fans because we look just like Joe Bloggs... but our _output_ is a lot more visible because of the internet.

It's people who come into this world without realising the 40-year-old history of the Star Trek fandom or the 75 years of LOTR fandom (yes, really!) and think it's something new and shiny who stomp all over the subtleties of our relationship with TPTB and risk screwing us all over.

Those who lurk at the edges for a while before dipping their toes in - even if they start off at ff.net or somewhere - they're far more likely to join our culture and take part in discussions and things that are just as much part of fandom culture as writing fanfic is - even if those things aren't as obviously fannish to the outside world as writing fanfic is.

The internet has certainly made it easier to find fellow fen, fic, vids and everything else we've come to associate with fans and fandom - and it's simply because of that ease of discovery that fanfic (going back to the subject of this radio discussion) has become so popular and so easy for non-fen to find.

After all, if a potential fan can stumble across something, so can a definite non-fan (or a person who would not come to identify themselves as a fan, even if they engage in some fannisy activity at home, for example, watching an episode and discussing it in minute detail with friends).

In conclusion: Fandom has been around for a long, long time. It may have grown and changed and developed, but it is not going away. We will have challenges to face in our future, but we aren't going to disappear quietly back into Anonymity.


End file.
